THE HEART & SOUL OF BEAUTIFUL ABSTRACTS

Reality is a place to start. There are those that choose to stay “true” to it. There are those for which reality is merely a point of departure. Artists, writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers, and creative thinkers of all kinds expand, extrapolate, bend, twist, and reshape whatever moves them to create abstracts.

Some abstracts become great works that ripple out and change the way we see the world. Some go as far as to change the world. Some change reality itself.

We’ve got some abstract inspiration for you below.

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”

-- Pablo Picasso

“Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.”

-- Jackson Pollock

“We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.”

-- Salvador Dali

“Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.”

-- John Keats

“I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract.”

-- Gustave Moreau

“To move the picture into our surroundings and give it real existence has been my ideal since I came to abstract painting.”

-- Piet Mondrian

“All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious.”

-- Henry Moore

“I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.”

-- Jean-Michel Basquiat

“Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.”

-- Leo Ornstein

“Clothes are only completed when somebody actually wears them. If they were art, they could be more abstract. As long as something is new and has never been seen before, I don't mind if people call it art. Wear them if you dare.”

-- Rei Kawakubo

Read more about Beautiful Abstract in Earth As Abstract Artist and Emotions Are Abstract Art.

And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Mind/Body, Soul/Impact, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Arts/Design, and Place/Time, Daily Fix posts.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by slgckgc. “Snowflakes on Rose.”
2. Image: “La Corrida,” by Pablo Picasso.
3. Image: “Convergence,” by Jackson Pollock.
4. Image: “Swans Reflecting Elephants,” by Salvador Dali.
5. Image: by torbakhopper. “The heart shape of the matter : rose macro, Chase bank, Castro, San Francisco.”
6. Image: by Victoria Stothard.  “KYLARK RISING VI FRONT.”
7. Image: “Broadway Boogie Woogie,” by Piet Mondrian. Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art.
8. Image: “Pieza de Bloqueo,” by Henry Moore. Courtesy of Henry Moore Foundation.
9. Image: “Bird On Money,” by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
10. Image: by Lady Madonna. “Dibujando en el aire.”
11. Image: by Paolo Roversi. “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between” exhibition. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum.
12. Image: by Richard Ricciardi. “High Rise Buildings.”
13. Image: by Cathy Brown Brown. “Bonfire in November.”
14. Image: by Vitorio Benedetti. “Começa aqui…”